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Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Response to Questions for Member States
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2024/04/26

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This is in response to a contribution to an OAS meeting distributed in my office this morning. It is of course my set of opinions only, and not reflective of any official policy or practice, though I would add that most of these have been undertaken to one degree or another by various levels of Canadian government organizations.

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Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates
Patrick McMillen, Michael Levin, Nature, 2024/04/26

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I want to say something like 'this paper describes a core tenet in connectivism' although of course we never conceived of it in anything like the richness and detail collective intelligence across 'scales and substrates' described here. This, in particular, is crucial: "collective intelligence is not only the province of groups of animals, and... an important symmetry exists between the behavioral science of swarms and the competencies of cells and other biological systems at different scales." The way networks work is tied up in the way evolution works, and these are tied up in how we describe learning and cognition generally. Or - how we should describe learning and cognition (as most people still labour under the mythology of folk-psychological information processing types of pictures such as 'executive function' and 'cognitive load' theories).

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The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
New York University, 2024/04/26

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Drawing on an emerging new picture of animal consciousness,  a group of researchers have signed this declaration recognizing animal consciousness. "Subjective experience requires more than the mere ability to detect stimuli. However, it does not require sophisticated capacities such as human-like language or reason. Phenomenal consciousness is raw feeling—immediate felt experience, be it sensory or emotional—and this is something that may well be shared between humans and many other animals." My similar sentiment is expressed here. It may be thought that an ethics of animal rights and welfare follows immediately, but given the way humans treat each other, we need not fear the recognition of animal consciousness forces any new behaviours on our part (though it probably should).

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Why some publishers aren't ready to monetize generative AI chatbots with ads yet
Sara Guaglione, Digiday, 2024/04/26

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I mean, it should be obvious why we don't want advertising in AI chatbots, right? They're supposed to be trusted advisors. Imagine you went to your lawyer for advice on selling a house and they said, "I'd be glad to help you, but first, let me take this opportunity to recommend a McDonald's hamburger." Yeah, no. This applies doubly as the technology, still under development, already has trust issues. " Advertising in these generative AI chatbot experience won't be a "sustainable model" long term, according to Jaffe, unless CPMs 'go way up.' Building a subscription model for Ingenio's chatbots also means the publisher will have more control over revenue, the user relationship and distribution, he added." 

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UNESCO and partners explore the digital futures of education
UNESCO, 2024/04/26

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A recent meeting of UNESCO on digital education futures is notable for the resources distributed: "its AI Readiness Assessment tool to translate the Recommendations on the Ethics of AI into actions, as well as its Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms to enable freedom of expression and inclusion while promoting a healthy information ecosystem in a digital era." Additionally, UNESCO's Guidance for the Use of Generative AI in Education and Research contains "a roadmap for regulating AI in education and strategies to address its profound risks and impact on teaching and learning," and a recent research report "which revealed gender biases and prejudices found in Large Language Models."

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Crisis Landscape - For navigating a crisis we need a map
Aleksander Nowak, Medium, Rapid Transition Lab, 2024/04/26

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I've been doing some work recently looking at task modeling. The time of linear and even circular models (like OODA) has past. Today we're looking at learning and working in complex environments that requires new tools. I stated by thinking of circular network diagrams, looked at chord diagrams, but this seems to be getting closer to the reality. "The CL aims to capture the entanglement and dynamics between the Covid-19 crisis and the Swedish food system through data-based visualization. The methodology includes a creation of a constantly evolving database with systemic trends captured through qualitative research methods i.a. interviews with food system actors, or literature review." The tool they use is called Kumu.

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E-Book of One's Own Foundations Micro-credential
eCampusOntario, 2024/04/26

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I like this a lot. "This e-book is a template for you to use to get started documenting your learning journey (aka an e-Book of One's Own - eBoOO). You are free to copy the book and use the template to make it your own. Instructions on how to do all this are included within. We look forward to seeing the results!" Via Terry Greene. "This practice will help you centre yourself in your learning. Rather than just submitting an assignment to a course dropbox and forgetting about it, you can put that assignment in your e-book, with all the others. We believe it will lead you to make more and deeper connections across your courses and over the years of your program.

 

 

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Yes, People Do Buy Books
Lincoln Michel, Countercraft, 2024/04/26

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I thought I linked to Elle Griffin's No one buys books, and commented "books are over", but maybe I just imagined it, because I can't find the link. Still, I would have done that, and in fairness, feel obligated to post this rebuttal. "BookScan counted 767 million print sales in 2023. BookScan claims to cover 85% of print sales." That's a lot of books, though keep in mind that this averages to about three books per person in the U.S. (population 336 million). These figures seem widely accepted even by those proclaiming a crisis in print book sales. It's one of those arguments where everyone can be right.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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